The 25 Best Albums of 2013

Let’s put “the good old days” of recording history in perspective. As a decent rock n’ roller in 1963, you’d be lucky to sell enough 45s to even dream of getting the opportunity to lay down an LP. A decade later, you’d be warned that concept albums were “just a fad.” So take your industry doomsaying and put it up against our selection of the 25 best albums of the year, most of them premised on the old-fashioned notion that listeners will sit through the whole thing. Case in point: In 2013, the reigning king of hip-hop worked with Rick Rubin, Daft Punk, and the ghost of Nina Simone on a dense, droning album that advertises its conceptual daring at every turn, is very hard to sit through, and landed near the top of our list.

So, while television eminences sputtered on about the year’s messier pop-culture moments (Lily Allen’s war on hip-hop! Miley Cyrus at the VMAs! “Accidental Racist”!), musicians across musical idioms played the album format in interesting ways, whether as a novel (Laura Marling’s Once I Was an Eagle), a sonic self-redefinition (Drake’s Nothing Was the Same), a nonfiction song cycle about romantic tension with your bandmate (the Civil Wars’ self-titled LP), or even a stoned-out entry in an ongoing serialized saga (Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady).

If the traditional long-player format remains sustainable from an artistic standpoint, we can take further encouragement from sales. Consider a week in late June, when the year’s most pretentious hip-hop album (Yeezus) appeared the same day as the year’s least pretentious hip-hop album (Born Sinner). Both went gold almost immediately. The market has spoken: If album-as-format is dead, it’s enjoying one hell of an afterlife. Ted Scheinman

Little Boots, Nocturnes

Like on her debut (and countless dance-pop treasures before it), the hooks and rhythms on Victoria Hesketh’s sophomore effort, Nocturnes, burrow farther and farther into your brain with each spin. If the strength of 2009’s Hands was its variety, though, Nocturnes‘s is its consistency, with a more focused attention on electronic dance music. The ‘80s is a decided touchstone, from the sliced-and-diced vocals of “Every Night I Say a Prayer” to the electro-Kate-Bush hook of “All for You,” and while the album stumbles slightly when it directly apes past dance subgenres rather than slyly nodding to them within the context of a more contemporary EDM sound, its highlights, like opening track “Motorway,” which pairs the time-honored theme of escape from a small town with cool synth pads and a subtly propulsive undercurrent, and the rollicking single “Broken Record,” make it easy to keep Nocturnes stuck on repeat. Sal Cinquemani

24

My Bloody Valentine, m b v

How do you follow a miracle? If you’re My Bloody Valentine, you don’t bother, especially when your own miracle, 1991’s Loveless, becomes such a colossal, money-sucking commercial failure that it makes you question whether these ignorant philistines were worth all the trouble in the first place. Or at least that’s what you did until earlier this year, when—without fanfare—you decide the world might finally be ready for another one. While m b v may not have the genre-shaking influence of its predecessor, it’s no less perfect for failing to foment the same kind of slow-burning revolution. It astonishes not by establishing a new musical lexicon (as its predecessor did), but by revealing just how much more can still be done with it. Blue Sullivan

23

The Civil Wars, The Civil Wars

The unique vocal and theatrical symbiosis that distinguished the Civil Wars from their contemporary-folk peers always seemed a bit too good to be true, and the duo’s very public breakup during an abbreviated European tour suggested that such intimate musical collaborations can only last so long. The Civil Wars, recorded as the duo’s relationship disintegrated, reflects the fragile tensions that inevitably develop in long-term partnerships and the desperate, confused attempts made to salvage them. Those tensions render the album a more muscular production than 2011’s Barton Hollow: the Rick Rubin-produced “I Had Me a Girl” features a razor-sharp electric guitar that slices through the Civil Wars’ signature honeyed harmonies, and “The One That Got Away” finds Joy Williams and John Paul White pushing one another toward new extremes of vocal range. Light spots like the uptempo “From This Valley” leaven the album’s lyrical weight and allow one to hope that this tightly wrought collaboration won’t be the group’s last. Annie Galvin

22

Chvrches, The Bones of What You Believe

The V in their name, inserted to make it easier to find them on the Internet, may be a tell that Chvrches hail from the 21st century, but everything else about the icy fortress of sound that the Scottish trio constructs on The Bones of What You Believe is mainlined straight from the ‘80s. The band appropriates both the misty synthesizers of Cocteau Twins and the laser-sharp pop sensibilities of New Order, welding them together to create stomping anthems. “Lies” channels the glaring swagger of Depeche Mode, while “Gun,” underpinned by the crystalline fragility of Lauren Mayberry’s voice, glistens with a vast yearning reminiscent of Kate Bush. Like breath hitting crisp air, Chvrches are a fascinating meeting of human warmth and brutal cold. Mark Collett

21

Lightning Dust, Fantasy

In my review of Web Therapy, I mentioned that the worst piece of advice I ever received was from a well-intentioned but misguided friend who told me that “feelings are just chemicals.” Lightning Dust’s Amber Webber must have received similar false comfort from a friend, but actually bought it hook, line, and sinker: “Whisper to me that you’ve had enough/Apologize that you’re not in love/If it’s just the chemicals in our brains/Stop, stay,” she pleads on “Diamond,” the opening track of the Canadian duo’s third album. Webber makes similar such laments about fading love throughout the album in a quivering, reverb-cloaked vibrato backed by partner Joshua Wells’s sparse, minimalist arrangements of ominous, creeping synths, Wurlitzer, and occasional acoustic guitar. The hooks are memorable and often mesmerizing, like on the enchanting penultimate ballad “Agatha.” If the songs on the first half of Fantasy trigger the chemicals in your brain, the captivating tracks that make up the second half implore you to submit to them completely. Cinquemani

Slant is reaching more readers than ever before, but advertising revenue across the Internet is falling fast, hitting independently owned and operated publications like ours the hardest. We’ve watched many of our fellow media sites fall by the way side in recent years, but we’re determined to stick around.

We’ve never asked our readers for financial support before, and we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or subscription fees. If you like what we do, however, please consider becoming a Slant patron.

I would have expected Slant to put down such indulgent choices like The Knife and Arcade Fire. This is way too non-Slant for me already.

Posted by Nguyen Thuy Hung on 2014-01-21 06:03:00

I'm usually not this commercial but I feel like Beyonce, Justin Timebrlake, Big Sean and John Mayer should have been included in this list

Posted by stephan boxie on 2014-01-09 16:31:33

I'm glad to see Little Boots on there because it was a decent pop listen.I liked J.Cole and Yeesus - 'New Slaves' is one of my faves of the year.I liked Lorde, didn't like it has much as some people but it was good.Always loved Disclosure, Pet Shop Boys' LP was good, a REAL homage to Moroder and better than Daft Punk's record IMO.I liked Once I Was An Eagle, it's a real melodic listen. Janelle's album was just a little but of a letdown for me - just a LITTLE, although her vocals were ace and I liked the album cover lol.

I liked HAIM's record.

I'm not sure what Charli XCX and Drake's records are doing on the Best Of Year list but whatever...

Posted by OK on 2013-12-14 10:40:44

As others have mentioned, Night Time, My Time should really be on here. And what about Rhye's Woman?

Posted by Evan on 2013-12-14 01:51:35

Good to see Nocturnes finally gets some props.

Posted by edward on 2013-12-13 22:53:34

Happily surprised to see Charli XCX and Chvrches here, given your reviews for them were less-than-favorable. And absolutely love to see Little Boots getting some attention; Nocturnes is pretty sick album by conventional standards that IMO was pretty overlooked.

Posted by Jason Longoria on 2013-12-13 20:50:26

Great selection, a lot of this albums would be on my list. There's something for everyone here, and my top 5 is exactly the same (except I'd put Reflektor at the top). I also agree that Sky Ferreira should have been here, but this is still the best 2013 end-year albums list I've read so far.

Posted by Matt Forrest on 2013-12-13 09:39:16

Daft Punk deserved to be on there though, certainly better than Yeezus.

Posted by Nik3000 on 2013-12-13 05:59:53

good for you. Keep basking then, in whatever that you do.

Posted by Rahul Jain on 2013-12-13 01:54:41

No Oddfellows? A pox on both your houses.

Posted by The Ultimate Warrior on 2013-12-13 01:04:13

Thanks for not including Daft Punk's album. I really love Sky Ferreira's album; disappointed to not see it here. Arcade Fire: Yes!! Petshop Boys: Yes!!! Yeezus: Wish it sucked but it is good.

Posted by I tow the line on 2013-12-12 21:56:20

I hated James Blake's SOFTmore album.

Posted by That Gay Earth on 2013-12-12 19:57:59

It's really really disappointing to see James Blake not here, i've been a follower of this magazine for quiet sometime now, Let's not anti establishment your establishment guys, i guess this place is just going to be another place for me to find new names and stuff. And not somewhere to look for critical opinions pertaining to contemporary arts. What a $%^&* Shame.

Posted by Rahul Jain on 2013-12-12 19:32:24

I would have put Sky Ferreira's on the list, but it's nice to see Little Boots included, esp. since that one is from earlier in the year.